Dina Wein-Reis | Making Chumps Of Corporate Giants

O Lady, be bad

Dina Wein-Reis (Photo: fraudtalk.blogspot.com)

Beg, borrow or steal. How do you make it, financially?

Of course that trio of choices paints an incomplete picture. Hard work and dedication are an ideal path toward success. But borrowing doesn’t hurt from time to time. For instance, if you need to borrow short term loans or payday loans, such resources are available. Begging, while unbecoming, is also an option, but doing so in public can lead to panhandling charges.

Then there’s stealing. Lately, we’ve seen our share of high-profile financial thieves, people who appear legitimate but are as felonious as cat burglars. Bernard Madoff and Allen Stanford make that list, and now we must add Dina Wein-Reis. She scammed multi-national consumer product companies for as much as $15 million per year. Considering that the companies she scammed likely wrote off the losses, Wein-Reis was in effect stealing from American taxpayers. No get out of jail free card for you, woman.

Distribution to self

A recent story at BusinessInsider.com indicates that Dina Wein-Reis of upper Manhattan allegedly duped companies like Procter & Gamble, Unilever and Hershey out of millions in a diversion scheme where she and her associates would convince primarily male executives to allow her company to supposedly distribute their products on college campuses, military bases and in aid packages at shelters and similar places.

What she actually did with the merchandise was quite different, however. She would sell the products to middlemen and retain the profits. For some strange reason, such diversion is not illegal in itself, but New York City prosecutors are attempting to get Dina Wein-Reis on fraud charges.

How did she pull it off?

Apparently, Dina Wein-Reis is an extremely charismatic woman. She would appeal to male executives by offering them a high-paying job with her company. She’d fly the executive in for the interview, where she and her handpicked underlings (all female, all well-educated and all attractive) would work into the mark’s confidence. At that point, the offer to obtain heavily discounted merchandise would be made, ostensibly for charitable redistribution. Wein-Reis would also assure the men that if her redistribution program was successful, they’d gain “exclusive access to these hard-to-reach markets.” Of course that was no distribution program.

From what I’ve read, Dina Wein-Reis was good enough to fool some of the same companies more than once. Either these executives were stupid, they were somehow complicit in the schemes, they were being blackmailed or there was something other commodity being exchanged. Ego stroking can certainly be intoxicating, but I’d like to think multi-million dollar executives would think with their brains at some point, rather than with another part of their anatomy.

But let’s not leave the blackmail option behind quite yet. Considering that Dina Wein-Reis and her people would lead off with the job offer, it would come place them in a compromising position with their employer (or at least embarrass them) if they came back later to call her bluff.

How bad did Dina do them?

Just a few of Dina Wein-Reis’s marks were Roche, who handed over $10 million in diabetes-testing equipment; Unilever, who lost $2.23 million worth of detergent; and Procter & Gamble, who coughed up “several million dollar’s worth” of shampoo. If you got samples of it with your morning paper, at a doctor’s office or on a college campus, it’s likely Dina Wein-Reis found a way to profit off something similar.

The spoils of deceit

Here’s just some of what is known about the extent of the Dina Wein-Reis operation:

She has over 100 different banks accounts and as many aliases used to run shell companies

The FBI has seized “scores” of necklaces, watches, two Louis XVI footstools, two Bugatti throne chairs, two Empire sleigh beds, and a 1920s cast-iron vanity… and that’s just from her Upper West side condo

She has homes in Westhampton Beach, New York, Bal Harbor, Florida and Jerusalem. Her Manhattan townhouse once was featured in Architectural Digest

She was a New York socialite with a multitude of connections

Now the game is over

And short term loans and payday loans won’t get her out, if she’s convicted. For you and loved ones, however, these types of loans can come in handy in a pinch – such as for bail. Hopefully that doesn’t happen to you, but if it does, try Personal Money Store for your payday loan needs.